PCB Design Resources and Information | Altium

Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Raspberry Pi Enters the World of Microcontrollers Learn more about the new Raspberry Pi microcontroller, its specifications, and ideal applications. Read Article

How to Calculate PCB Power Plane Current Capacity Do you know how much current your power plane can accommodate? Learn more about PCB power plane current capacity in this article. Read Article

Decoding Media Independent Interface (MII) in Ethernet Links Learn about media independent interface variants for routing Ethernet links, including gigabit variants for 1 GbE and faster links. Read Article

Fostering Innovation in a Post-Covid World What’s in your soft skill toolbox? Eli Hughes is a true full-stack hardware engineer and a co-founder of Tzero Brew. He joins the OnTrack podcast to share his insights on how to foster innovation, manage upstream failure, build trust with your fellow engineers and stakeholders, and develop your soft skills—and other non-technical skills we use to communicate with each other and solve problems effectively. Listen to the Podcast: Download this Read Article

Making the Most of Your Crystal Oscillator “Blindly” adopting what a crystal oscillator data sheet says usually results in adequate frequency stability. An oscillator requires the phase shift around the loop to be 360° and this total phase shift must be a precise and stable oscillation frequency. Read Article

How to Analyze Phase Distortion in a Transmission Line Pay attention to your transfer function if you want to spot phase distortion in a transmission line. Read Article

Thunderbolt Design: Adaptable High Speed Serial Data in Your PCB A new product for high speed/resolution graphics and high data transfer is a candidate for Thunderbolt design. Here’s what you can do to successfully design your PCB for Thunderbolt 3 or 4. Read Article

Huge Vu-meter with RGB LEDs Project A laboratory journal to guide you through the steps to develop a successful product that value-conscious customers are sure to love. Read Article

Developing a PCB Testing Procedure For New Designs Before your new device comes off the fabrication line, it will need to go through a comprehensive PCB testing procedure. Here’s how to create a PCB testing procedure for new boards. Read Article

Customizing Performance-Based Electrical Design Rules in Altium Designer Electrical design rules go beyond manufacturing and assembly. PCBs also require electrical design rules that are based on a signals’ electrical behavior. Read Article

Gigabit Ethernet 101: Basics to Implementation This guide is what you are looking for if you’re ready to add ethernet, especially gigabit ethernet to your electronic design and need to get up to speed. Read Article

Jumpstart Your Next Design Your project is complete and you are ready to move onto the next project. But a lot of the same properties in the new project are already completed in the previous project. There must be a quick and simple way of bringing these properties over to your next projects. Read Article

Expert Analysis of Measured S-Parameters Read to learn an introduction about S-parameter analysis. This article covers how to identify port maps, what insertion loss and return loss looks like, how the various S-parameters look in the time-domain, and some additional analysis techniques to use when data mining S-parameters. Read Article

High Performance Design Systems with SI Guru Scott McMorrow In this episode of the OnTrack Podcast, one of those world renown SI gurus, Scott McMorrow, CTO of Samtec Inc.’s Signal Integrity Group, connects with Judy Warner to discuss signal integrity concerns, and especially Samtec’s Webinar series, gEEk spEEk. Read Article

Printed Circuit Design in Altium Designer Printed Electronics is emerging to become as common as 3D printing. With this fast-emerging technology, new possibilities have come into Watch Video

How to do PCB Trace Length Matching vs. Frequency Keeping high speed signals properly timed and synchronized requires PCB trace length matching vs frequency. Here’s how it works. Read Article

Using the iPad Pro for Electronic Design Altium Concord Pro® on Altium 365 was updated with a smoother, more feature-full and more intuitive interface for the web design viewer. I want to use this occasion to share with you some of my favourite apps and websites for electronic design. Read Article